The family story goes that Ulric's and Antoinette’s three daughters, Alma, Nina and Emma, made their livings as seamstresses who took "samplers" like this of gold thread embroidery to the Royal Palaces in Stockholm and elsewhere for commission work.

This particular sampler belonged to Nina Sohlberg. She initialed it with an embroidered S overlaying an N found in the lower right hand corner of this piece. The late 1890s is the approximate time that this sampler was finished.

There has been quite a lot of research concerning this handwork, from the palaces of Sweden to the Royal School of Needlework at Hampton Court in England, the head of whom met with me in 2010 at the Hyatt Regency San Francisco Airport to study these pieces.

The Pillow Cover

The Emails

The emails from 2007 regarding my research are below. One email suggested that there was no Swedish school for this type of handwork, but that there was one in Vienna, Austria during the time period at the end of the 18th century to the beginning of the 19th century. Yet that school had been dissolved. Hence, more research must be done on this!

With the last death of Ulric's and Antoinette's daughters, their youngest Emma who was living in Stockholm, in 1955 the family lawyer mailed to their great granddaughter, Lindsborg's Nina Sohlberg Fry, the family heirlooms which included these two (2) pieces of gold thread embroidery and the three (3) Sohlberg Kosta Glasbruk Family Portraits of: Ulric; Antoinette; and Alma and Ernest.

The Swedish Gold Thread Embroidery Custom Document of 1955

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